Take the LAST place. Be the servant of all. He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, He said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me- God who sent me.”
Mark 9: 35-37

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ABOUT MINA:

Mina is a precious little girl recently rescued from an orphanage in Eastern Europe who is now finally home with her forever family! She had been without a mother or father to love her & care for her each day. No one to rock her, kiss her gently or tell her she's loved. She is blessed with an extra chromosome known as Down syndrome, which for her that meant a life of being viewed as worthless in the country she was born into & a life without hope. Because of this her parents gave her up at the age of 6 months when they found out the diagnosis & from there her life progressivly went down hill. We are the Gower family residing in OKC who recently adopted this little angel. She was extremely malnourished and unable to do just about anything when we first met her. She will be 2 in January & is the size of a 3-6 month old weighing 14lbs. She continues to amaze us at how quickly she is progressing with love and nutrition. She has learned to sit up, roll over, feed herself finger foods, hold her own bottle and loves to interact with toys and other children. Her life has changed so much in such a short period of time and will forever be changed! Thank you Lord for putting a burden on our hearts to rescue this little blessing and making her apart of our family!

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Mina's Ukrainian Wardrobe~ Celebrating Independence day!

Today we went to our last 2 orphanage visits!! Yay!! We also got to feed Mina lunch again and I should have a very own blog post to tell you all about the most horrible awful diapers we have ever changed in our lives (& we've changed quite a few diapers.) Many people warn about those terrible orphanage diapers but boy there is really no way to prepare yourself for that. Since we fed Mina lunch yesterday during this afternoon visit it decided to all come out at us and Jim and I worked through fighting back gagging/ throwing up and tears from hard laughter during 2 explosive diaper changes. You can tell that girl hasn't ever had that much to eat before because we've hardly changed any diapers during any of our visits till now. Glad she's getting some food and fluids in. Today for lunch we didn't feed her the entire bowl all though I'm sure she would've had every last bit of it. Her little tummy was hard as a rock and we'll probably have to feed her smaller more frequent portions while her tummy adjusts to the change.

Now we are getting already to bring our little Mina bean back to our apartment tomorrow. So I went shopping today to figure out which of the special dresses I posted previously we should buy. My favorite was #6 the beautiful dressy one with little yellow flowers. We actually went to get that one the other day and then I noticed that on the bottom edging there is a part where the hemming is gone and the fabricy mesh is fraying. If anyone knows baby clothes and Ukrainian prices you know the clothes here are not at all cheap & I certainly didn't want to pay an outrageous amout for a dress in less than perfect condition. Another thing that was a bit disapointing was that NONE of the dresses were actually made in Ukraine. They were all made elsewhere so that kind of took the specialness out in my mind of spending that kind of money for something that's not even from her country. So instead we thought we will put her in one of the precious dresses we brought from home... I bought the beautiful cream yellowish shoes, and made her a hair bow to match.

Instead of spending the $ on a dress that was not even from her own country we bought her a little Ukrainian wardrobe all handmade here. None of them fit her as of now cause we looked and looked for the tiniest ones and just couldn't find them her size but they should fit within about a year or so and she will have these precious outfits as keepsakes from her own country where she was born!

Sorry some pics posted sideways.

Stacking Dolls. The one on the left is Mina's & the one on the right is Myla's.

Today is Independence day in Ukraine. Lots of people were dressed up in their Ukrainian outfits similar to the ones we bought Mina pictured above. There was so many people out on the streets this evening. A concert, lots of fun festivities, and pony rides!!

4 comments:

Oh my gosh! Can I pay you to bring one home for Sofia? I really meant to find one for her and had absolutely no luck while we were there...even just one of those adorable shirts! I would pay you and then some to bring one home and have it shipped to miss Sofia! Let me know! I'm SOOOO happy for you guys!jvaranini@yahoo.com

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About Me

We are the Gower family!! I'm married to a wonderful man and my best friend, Jim for going on 7 years now. We have a little girl named Myla who is 2 & adopted Mina in Sept(she will be 2 in January), and I am pregnant with a little girl and due in February. Little did we know after we said Yes to the Lord and His calling to adopt precious Mina that He would bless us with another gift. So now we will have 3 little girls 2 and under. We are so thankful for our precious children & think they are gifts and blessings from the Lord.
My husband is self employed and does videography work and I stay at home with the girlies!
Life Church is our church home and where we serve! We are just living life striving to go against the grain of this world and follow God each step of the way! We believe we are created for a purpose and daily strive to fulfilling that which we were created for!